You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
Your empty-handed armies, are all going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

67 Comments

General CommentCould it be that Dylan is Baby Blue? He has to stop listening to everyone's expectations as to where he should go. He must leave those stepping stones and go his own way even though there may be a price to pay.

I've enjoyed singing and playing this song for years but have never looked at from the point of view that Dylan is Baby Blue. It seems more interesting from that perspective.

General Commenti think this song is about accepting changes in life. this was the last song dylan played at the infamous newport concert (where he was booed for going electric) and the last song on Bringing It All Back Home (his last album that was mostly acoustic) i think he is just saying it is time for him to move on creatively(sp?)

General CommentThe obvious major theme of this song is Dylans moving on out of the folk scene, and giving a kind of warning to others than you can't stop change. But as is so typical of him, the images don't all make perfect sense, at least not to me. But they are so vivid... oh my, they must mean something. The one line I especially like is ..... "The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense. Take what you have gathered from coincidence." I could go off for a while on what I think it means... it's obviously more warning to those who want to stay put but are forced, as we all are, to move on and start anew. About 30 years ago I read a whole essay in some magazine about the "take what you have gathered from coincidence" line. The author felt it was very metaphysical..... kind of like..."Life is very mysterious and uncertain and we're not going to figure it out really well, but hey..... those seeming coincidences may just give us a clue. So gather them up and make the best sense out of things that you can. There's a wonderful line in a Jackson Browne song about death...."It's like a song I can hear right in my ear. I can't sing it. I can't help listening." For me, Dylan's lyrics are often like that. They are just beyond my total grasp. I can't put them in a box and wrap them up with a bow. There. Done. They just keep ringing in my ear... over and over. They must mean something very important. What?

good analysis. He means be careful out there...life is dangerous, but also, w/our risk, life is futile. This is what is meant by 'coincidence' line. Sometimes things just fall in your lap, like good luck, fortune...hang onto that. Use it. It may help w/ the bumps on the road. It could be wisdom. Serendipity. I agree w/ you, jmark, his lyrics are beyond total grasp. That is why it is so challenging, but not futile. He gives enough clues, and says most of these songs are autobiographical. He is leaving the safety of the folk scene for a brighter, although uncertain, future. He will need what he learned in the folk system--the ability to stand on his own, and not be a clone--to sustain him. It might be rough. The press and his fans may dump him, or even worse, destroy him. He is taking a huge risk, but that is what makes his music--even today--so exciting. For Dylan, the glass is always half full.

General CommentI think there is one line here that is misunderstood, and it is pretty nifty.

When Dylan is wrapping up the song, and he's telling the woman to leave the dead and to start over, he says the line "strike another match girl, start anew" I really think it's "girl" and not "go"-- if you listen to the song it could go either way, but just here me out.

I think this line reference to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," in which a vagabond child selling matches sees visions of warm, safe places she will never be a part of, and each time she lights a match she sees a new scene, a new life. At the end of the fairy-tale, she lights her final match and dies... but in Dylan's case, when he says to "light another match, girl" he's not talking about a REAL death, he's talking about a change. Like the girl in the story, the subject of this song is down-and-out, she thought she was in a safe place, but she's not-- the carpet's being pulled right out from under her. She needs to figuratively "light a match" and see the possibilities for a new life, and she needs to accept, even embrace this change and join the vagabond outside to start a new journey.

General CommentI think it's about a girl/woman who used to be able to get whatever man she wanted; but now the narrator (Bob?) has realised this and won't be strung along any more. Or maybe the world has sussed the woman out. Either way, same message, you won't fool us no more baby blue!

General CommentI think this song is about a woman who was once well off and is now poor and off on her own . . . similar to like a rolling stone . . . or maybe i have it backwards. Either way these lyrics left out half the song.

General CommentI have no idea what Dyan meant by this song. However, I was alone playing this song recently, a week or so after being told by my 19 year old daughter that she is pregnant. I had already been dealing with thoughts that I've suddenly lost her or at least the child I knew and that she has lost her whole experience of being a young adult. Also having thoughts that as much as he says he will be there for her now it's very possible that in the end she finds that I am the only one who will not be "walking out the door", these lyrics hit me especially hard and was very emotional. I've given up trying to figure out the exact meaning to songs and moments like this give them more value than whatever Bob was talking about (although I think many on here have hit upon the same theme as me)

Dylan is never to be trusted to actually say what his songs mean. He is known too just throw out a line that pops into his head. The song is a kiss-off, but a generalized one. There is a bitterness to the lyrics that can not be denied. At the time he wrote it, he was getting annoyed with being portrayed as the "voice of a generation." Blue, as Dylan put it, was "the color of dissent" (see the 60s Playboy interview). it was also at this time that he was photographed with blue eyes (earlier and later 60s photos show him with brown eyes, and since the 70s, they've been blue). Many in his circle were vocal about not approving of where he was going, trying to distance himself from the political voice many saw him as. This is at once him telling them to buzz off and accept change, and him steeling himself to make the changes he wanted to. A person I know who worked for Albert Grossman thinks "Baby Blue" might have been used as a derogatory comment about Dylan from John Hammond, the Columbia exec who signed Dylan. (Grossman was an incredibly intimidating man, but Dylan was the goose that laid the golden egg. he was also one of those odd things - a manager his clients could trust

Dylan is never to be trusted to actually say what his songs mean. He is known too just throw out a line that pops into his head. The song is a kiss-off, but a generalized one. There is a bitterness to the lyrics that can not be denied. At the time he wrote it, he was getting annoyed with being portrayed as the "voice of a generation." Blue, as Dylan put it, was "the color of dissent" (see the 60s Playboy interview). it was also at this time that he was photographed with blue eyes (earlier and later 60s photos show him with brown eyes, and since the 70s, they've been blue). Many in his circle were vocal about not approving of where he was going, trying to distance himself from the political voice many saw him as. This is at once him telling them to buzz off and accept change, and him steeling himself to make the changes he wanted to. A person I know who worked for Albert Grossman thinks "Baby Blue" might have been used as a derogatory comment about Dylan from John Hammond, the Columbia exec who signed Dylan. (Grossman was an incredibly intimidating man, but Dylan was the goose that laid the golden egg. he was also one of those odd things - a manager his clients could trust